a little hard to miss, no tripod collar, hood seems like an afterthought

I was really mixed about getting this lens, but WOW am I impressed now that I have it. It takes gorgeous pictures. Very crisp, good wide open, but really phenomenal stopped down even to just f5.6.

The weight feels very balanced on the 20D, its light enough to not be a bother (I had it on the camera and walking around for about 4 hours straight and barely noticed), but heavy enough to be easy to hold steady. AF is fast and quiet with the USM.

To nitpick: it should really come with a tripod collar, but that's a less than huge complaint from me since I mostly shoot handheld. Its also pretty visible, which can be both good and bad (nice when if convinces people to move out of your way, annoying for candids), and the lens hood feels cheap.

Overall I think you'd be very hard pressed to find a lens of this quality for this kind of price tag.

For the price this isn't a bad lens, but if I'm going to pay for f/2.8, I'd like the lens to be able to produce a reasonable picture at that speed. Maybe I've got a particularly bad copy, but I don't notice an improvement until about f/5.6, and it's only truly sharp above f/8. Images shot at 2.8 are mostly unsalvagable. I've also had the occasional problem with the AF hunting.